Being a musician is very easy. My house is full of musical instruments. There's a lot of music, always.

There's so many songs about heartbreak that exist this in the world, because music is somehow the perfect medium to express something like this.

What comes first? The melody, always. It's all about singing the melodies live in my head. They go in circles. I guess I'm quite conservative and romantic about the power of melodies. I try not to record them on my Dictaphone when I first hear them. If I forget all about it and it pops up later on, then I know it's good enough. I let my subconscious do the editing for me.

There is this stereotype of Icelanders all believing in spirits, and I've played up to that a bit in interviews.

I sometimes fall into the trap of doing what I think I should be doing rather than what I want to be doing.

All we had ever heard about record company people is that they were vampires and criminals...and they killed Elvis Presley.

I think after Iceland's independence in 1944, we were not very sure of ourselves and our confidence was really low. It took one generation to sort of get over that. I'm second generation. My parents were born in 1945-46. Our movement at the punk times was like, we can sing in Icelandic, we are strong.